Izzy is a remarkable dog, and more than any of my dogs, I feel he locks into my consciousness in a very particular way. Yesterday, Sara Friedman of socialmomentum.org (she is a social media and computing counselor) came to the farm and helped me shoot a video of Izzy as I read him part of the chapter about him in “Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm,” my first children’s book out at the end of April.
Izzy is a pure bred border collie who was abandoned on a farm, where he lived mostly outside for the first five or six years of his life. He is an odd dog, and my work with him as a hospice therapy dog was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. It was a dark time for me, and we drove all over Washington County and the Adirondacks sharing our lives with people on the edge of life. He did much good, and brought much comfort. And he taught me much about life and death.
Izzy has an almost pyschic sense of people’s need and attention. I was touched by his responses as I read to him from the book. The video is cute, I guess, but more than that to me.
Izzy and I have a special connection, and I don’t know what he is thinking, but it is hard to believe he is not listening to my every word. Lenore, of course, jumped in at the beginning of the shoot to shower both of us with some love. She is loving this book tour stuff.
I also, and with Sara’s help – she got me into video – read the four dogs some of the reviews of the book. It was fun to watch their responses.
“Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm” can now be pre-ordered.
This barn seems to me to have a face, an expression, and it is speaking to me of change and function.
I’m into week two of the video era. I’m still adjusting to it, and still see it as a mixed blessing.
There is so much cultural and technological change I don’t really think it’s possible to keep up with more than a fraction of it. You have to pick your spots. The world of the writer is evolving rapidly. There is great concern in publishing about writers doing the things I’m doing.
For one thing, there is a belief that people like me are giving too much away for free, and that people will have no reason to buy my books. It’s already almost impossible for many photographers to sell their work, so many people now take photos and there are so many available for free.
There is also the concern about focus and distraction – cell phones, video cameras, cables, passwords, batteries, electricity, Ipads, Iphones, Aperture and I movies. I am on the computer more, and this blog takes more and more of my time, managing and maintaining equipment, writing, taking still photos and videos, maintaining the blog,Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Web management, and doing my work. Yes, it is expensive and it is not clear whether it will pay for itself or if it will pay for itself, or exactly how.
I am sharing more of myself and my life, and I was already sharing quite a bit. I will work hard to maintain boundaries and privacy around my life and the representations of it. I’m not sure how that till work.
Sometimes I do feel as if I’m being drawn into an Orwellian orb. It seems that people like it, though, and that I have opened up a potentially vast new audience for my work. That is a significant thing, especially these days. But how much do I want to be known? How much of this machine do I want to feed? And what are the lines around it and the limits to it? The Orwellian nightmare is that we are consumed by our technology, and dominated by its mindless aspects. Can it mesh with a spiritual life?
This much connectedness can also be obsessive and overwhelming, and increase the expectations of people. A writer used to connect with readers only through his books. Now…wow.
On the plus side, I love much of it. I like taking videos, and I love editing them. I am mesmerized by the possibilities for me and my work, for the blessing of these powerful new tools. I believe writers have to change in thoughtful and deliberate ways. I need to understand the Net and the Web, Itunes, You Tube, videos and apps. Those are no part of the writer’s vocabulary, like it or not. I have found a new way to tell my story, a creative challenge. That is a momentous thing for me.
I will continue exploring the use of videos to promote my new children’s book “Meet The Dogs of Bedlam Farm,” because this technology and the dogs are a perfect fit for it. But I will hopefully be judicious about it. I have another book coming out this fall, a book on animal grieving. “Going Home: Finding Peace When Animals Die.” I want to really think about that. Thanks, by the way, for all the feedback. It seems people really like this new tool. I don’t want to lose all the mystery, though. I want to fight for that.
I felt badly for my dogs, especially the border collies, this winter. They’ve been unable to get out further than the back yard for mos, and the snow and ice are so high and thick they can barely do that. Cesar is right about at least one thing – dogs need exercise. They don’t need to run around all day, but they do need to move and so yesterday, when the sun came out, I got the ATV out of the barn and took Izzy, Rose and Lenore for an ATV ride. I took Frieda out once, but she kept going, halfway to Vermont. She doesn’t get to go on the ATV rides, not yet.
THey are a bit messy. My command is “stay, stay, stay,” repeated so that they can her me over the engine noise, and also “go, go, go” the command to run ahead of the ATV. Rose always pauses at the end of the run to get behind me and try and herd the ATV. Border collies can be very smart. Border collies can be very dumb, something you don’t read about in all of those stories about how many words they are learning each year, and how many chess games they are winning.
Anyway, I brought the video camera along and it gives something of a feel for it. In warm weather, we run along paths in the woods for a couple of miles, and they are tired and happy dogs. Lenore is surprisingly fast and strong, and has no trouble keeping up with Rose and Izzy.
Come along for the ride. I am tense during these outings, because although there is virtually no traffic on my road in the winte, it only takes one car or truck. So I am vigilant. Even as cranked as they get, they know when to get off the road.
In a meditation early this morning, a teacher posed this question: what would an alien think of the earth if he or she (or it) came down and watched what our culture calls the news. He thought they would probably think there were just a few thousand people in the world, and they all lived in New York or Washington or Los Angeles and they mostly talked through and at one another.
Listening to this, I thought the poor aliens would instantly be anxious and annoyed, and see our world as framed by stories of tragedy, argument and conflict.
I thought of the countless stories of people, animal and places that are not in the news, that never will make that idea of news. People in small towns, the Plain States, deserts and mountains and the countless animals and spirits whose existence is not considered newsworthy either.
I thought during the meditation of what my newscast might be for today.
These stories came to mind.
I got up before dawn and made breakfast and talked with my former girlfriend, and we laughed and planned the day and saw how fortunate we are to be together. That was a big story for me.
I went out and brought hay to the donkeys, and kissed Lulu on the nose. Frieda jumped up onto my lap and licked me on the nose.
Driving to meditation, I saw many people getting up, going to work. I saw deer in the fields, cows moving to the hay, cars on the road, schoolbusses picking up kids. In our culture, their live are not considered news, unless something awful happens to them. But I was thinking of each one as a story, the big news of my life.
When I got back, these four enthusiastic dogs came bounding over me, and I wondered at the gifts they had given me, the books they had inspired, the life they had led me to live, the creativity they trigger.
But the big story for me, I suppose, was that driving to meditation, I met the sun rising up over the hill coming the other way. I guess that really was the lede story, even though I didn’t put it first. And then I got out of the car and stood with my camera and caught the moment. A beautiful and peaceful moment for me. And I came home and put the photo in the computer and laughed to the dogs – Rose and Lenore. “I got it” I said, and I laughed.
I guess that ends the morning newscast. The blog is my signal to the world, I guess, my network. More later.
